Special Presentation: The New York City Origins of the Disability Rights Movement

09/18 7-8 PM, Special Presentation: The New York City Origins of the Disability Rights Movement¯ with Historian Warren Shaw (BCID, 27 Smith St, Fulton-Livingston, Brooklyn) For more information or RSVP, or request accommodations, 718-998-3000 or info@bcid.org with your name, number of people attending and any accommodations needed. $5 Donation requested.

The disability rights movement is an important branch of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. This movement is often overlooked, but it was truly a revolutionary effort. The founders of that movement began the journey of an entire class of the American population up out of utter powerlessness.

By fighting to allow the disabled to enter the agora and participate in mainstream social and political life; by redefining the disabled – even to themselves -- as a minority group, the pioneers made the disabled community, for the first time, both conscious of its own existence and visible to the able-bodied world. Yet the story of the New York beginnings of the disability-rights struggle has never been publicly discussed, anywhere -- until now.

In this hour-long illustrated talk, Warren will describe the earliest moments of the New York City movement, beginning with the League of the Physically Handicapped, in the 1930s, and extending up through the establishment of the Architectural Barriers Committee, the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, Disabled in Action and the independent living movement. In particular, Warren will discuss Brooklyn's crucial (and invariably overlooked) contributions to the movement's leadership and organization, including the Brooklyn Center for People with Disabilities, and pivotal figures both famous and forgotten, including Judy Heumann, Marilyn Saviola, and Richard Match.